"Reversing the tide of history" has always been one of the most irresistible gameplay modes in historical simulators. On August 20, an interactive film game called "Shao Song: Return My Mountains and Rivers" went online on Steam, where players take on the role of Emperor Zhao Gou of the Southern Song dynasty, redeeming his historical reputation.
Shao Song: Rivers and Mountains is an interactive film game adapted from the online novel Shao Song by Yuwen Group's Starting Point author Liu Dan Pa Shui, produced by Interactive Star, which was recently invested in by Stephen Chow's Bijiao Group, with over 10 hours of real-life footage, and the original work ranking first in the historical category's dual list. After the game went online, the peak number of concurrent players on Steam once exceeded 12,000.
However, the number of players online has been declining daily, according to SteamDB.
Maoyan Entertainment is not the only player betting on interactive film games this year. Huanrui Century kicked off with *Gazing North at the Rivers and Mountains* last November, which broke into the top 10 of China's bestseller chart within three hours of launch and sent its shares up four consecutive daily limit-ups. The company has since invested in producing *Damn! 2* and published *Codename Three Kingdoms: Dragon Rise*. Huace Film & TV's first interactive film game project, *Codename: Lost*, began production in August and is slated for release in 2027.
Adding earlier entrants such as Bananatime and MangoTV, companies at each link in the film and television chain, from ticketing to production to broadcasting, have already taken game adaptations as a confirmed new direction, and the frequency of blockbuster hits is also increasing, with the results of "Sheng Shi Tian Xia: Nu Di Pian" being clear to see.
It appears that 2026 will be a year of significant change and growth for China's interactive video game industry. Data from the DataEye Research Institute also shows that the Chinese interactive video game market is expected to exceed 1.8 billion yuan in 2026, with a year-on-year growth rate of 20%, and the industry continues to expand.
Data source: DataEye/Industrial Securities Media Weekly compilation
Different types of players each have their own appeal points and prior expectations. Image source: Steam.
Currently, most popular interactive film and game works are focused on emotional consumption. In the category of Chinese domestic themes that players can most easily identify with, the historical theme and strategic gameplay of "Shao Song" naturally cater more to players who enjoy hardcore narratives, with male players making up the majority. This shows that the thematic landscape of interactive films and games is expanding from emotional consumption to hardcore narratives.
Controversy over core gameplay mechanics
The core gameplay of "Shao Song: River and Mountain" is a three-layer structure of "real-life video + branching choices + chapter-based tactical battles". By selecting branches and watching the plot unfold, players can progress through the game, which is interspersed with QTE-style instant reactions, character affection, and changes in faction standings. Key military plot points (such as the Night Crossing of the Huai River and the Battle of Xiacai) feature turn-based tactical battles, where players deploy generals, release skills, and capture cities on a grid-based map.
The official release of the game's third version update since its launch is sourced from: Steam
In an official update on September 1, the production team made corrections to the most controversial strategy gameplay, adding a button to skip skill animations, allowing players to click on the bottom right to skip the animation playback. As for the gameplay itself, each round of the strategy game now has an additional chance to undo a move, reducing the difficulty of trial and error. It is rare for interactive games to make adjustments to their gameplay. Precisely because of this rarity, this adjustment has put the core issue of interactive games on the table: how to balance "gameplay" and "cinematic experience"?
The tactical gameplay's graphical style is somewhat reminiscent of a mini-program game
The controversy surrounding the strategy game stems from the disconnect between media formats. The film and television portion of Shao Song is highly visual, with images completing the audience's imagination; in contrast, turn-based strategy games are essentially a type of miniature game that relies on players actively using their imagination to envision the brutality of the battlefield. When the production team handed over key plot points to the strategy game, the "branching choices" approach commonly used in film and television was replaced, resulting in insufficient immersion in battles and leaving players with a sense of disorientation, feeling like they are "only handling internal affairs." The more obvious disconnect comes from the art style: the strategy game's artistic texture is similar to that of a mini-program game, and the character illustrations in the cutscenes evoke memories of Chengguang Games, making the juxtaposition with the live-action film and television images even more jarring, further amplifying the sense of disconnect.
One game, four visual styles (anime visual novel, tactical RPG, live-action, AI)
Secondly, the war history genre itself amplifies the gap between expectations and reality. In works with war and strategy as their core background, "battles" are the focus of niche players, who have clear expectations for the form, style, and quality of battles. There is a fundamental rule in the film and game industry: no matter how rich the gameplay is, it must be based on a solid plot twist and feedback; once the foundation is shaken, the piled-up gameplay design will appear somewhat ridiculous. After stripping away the war strategy elements, the gameplay of "Shao Song" is left with only branch choices and some QTEs that do not affect the plot. This shows that the script is the product, and the film and game category does not have a moat of gameplay.
With an 80% positive review rate, aside from the original work, what else are people playing?
Shao Song initially received a wave of negative reviews after its release. Although its reputation has shown some signs of improvement, new players continue to point out its main problems and weaknesses. Overall, Shao Song's adaptation of the original work has its strengths and weaknesses, both of which are quite apparent.
Like "The Simulated Emperor", 2,798 comments are mostly from the Simplified Chinese community, with some long-tail insufficient image sources: Steam
Adapting a big IP involves translating an emotionally resonant core, already validated by the market, into the language of a new medium. Film and television-based games are one of the most IP-dependent categories, as they are content-driven, high-cost, and have low replay value. Without an IP, it would be necessary to educate the market from scratch, which is too unpredictable for interactive film and television games with production costs often in the hundreds of millions.
However, when it comes to major IPs, it's inevitable to face the strict scrutiny of the original work's fans. Those who have read the original novel know that the charm of "Shao Song" lies in its extremely solid knowledge base and narrative foundation, even if it's an alternate history, its settings, logic, and language are all very rigorous. When such a highly literary work is adapted across media, it will naturally suffer from a loss of texture. The more complete the original work is, the narrower the design space for the core of the adaptation - branching narratives. Multiple plotlines either get accused of being overly modified or become a rehashing of the original story, which is also one of the many controversies faced by "Shao Song: Return My Rivers and Mountains".
Each chapter allows for free replay to choose new branches, but some are "false branches"
However, the game doesn't require players to devise strategies from scratch or make crucial decisions, but rather allows them to enter a "performance" context with the actors, following a designed alternate storyline and experiencing a historical period in a dramatic and lightly interactive way. When ordinary people first encounter interactive video games, their most common comment is: isn't this just a PPT with choice buttons? But doing this kind of light interaction well has a much higher threshold than it appears. The "pseudo-branching" and homogenization of endings in interactive video games are a hard injury that illustrates this point.
There are a total of 16 different endings
The game "Invisible Guardian" has a unique charm, where the fun of the game doesn't lie in the complexity of its operations, but in the resonance of its narrative. Source: Steam
Based on player feedback, the first two or three chapters of "Shao Song: Return My Rivers and Mountains" have met the expectations of some non-original players in terms of thrilling moments, including recalling Li Gang, killing Liu Guangshi, crossing the Huai River at night to capture Cai City, and unconditionally reappointing Yue Fei, among others. In these highlights, players successfully played the role of a "true Song Dynasty official" who is good at using people, decisive in killing, and clear-headed.
The Future of Interactive Games in the AI Wave
The evolution of interactive film games toward the short-drama format is most directly visible on the user side. In 2024, *Wan Dan* launched as a Douyin mini-program, and by 2026 *Sheng Shi Tian Xia* had completed a simultaneous four-platform release. The latter's publisher noted that mini-program users skew heavily toward audiences of short dramas and short videos. On the regulatory front, the Measures for the Development and Administration of Micro Short Dramas, effective September 1, explicitly names interactive film games, placing them under the same rulebook as short dramas.
Shao Song: Rivers and Mountains is expanding across film, television, gaming, and short drama categories
In terms of scale and production style, "Shao Song: Return Our Rivers and Mountains" is essentially a short drama. AI's involvement in game and short-drama production appears to be an industry-wide norm—short-drama platforms release 128,000 new titles per quarter, with AI-generated content accounting for over 95%. On the gaming side, AI-generated character art and voice acting have also quietly become widespread. Yet players of "Shao Song: Return Our Rivers and Mountains" remain somewhat resistant to the AI's role in the production.
Even positive reviews can hardly avoid bringing up AI. Image source: Steam
Interactive movies, also known as FMV (Full Motion Video) games, have long been defined as a category that uses "live-action footage as a medium". It is precisely the two characters "real person" that have borne the greatest leverage for interactive movies to break through categories. The real-person format allows film and television audiences who originally did not play games to enter without any barriers, and for the cross-category genre of film and television and games, real people have connected two user pools with the lowest learning cost.
The role of AI has become subtle in this regard. One of the focal points of criticism for "Shao Song" on Steam is the insertion of AI-generated images and comic-style cutscenes between live-action shots, with some players stating that major battle scenes are presented entirely using AI, and although they can understand that this is due to cost constraints, it's "really a bit unbearable".
On the other end is "Min Guo Gui Shi", which emerged in the summer of 2026. The small team of four, with main creators from NetEase and Dieyi, features no real-life actors, with all visuals generated by AI, and adds a "二合解谜" puzzle-solving element to the traditional Chinese supernatural theme, with over 20,000 wishes on Steam and receiving a large amount of positive feedback at the ChinaJoy trial play conference.
The "Chinese-style horror" has a high degree of natural compatibility with AI, source: Steam
This may suggest that what players truly object to is rarely AI itself, but rather how AI is deployed and where it is applied. The difficulty with *Shaosong: Return Our Rivers and Mountains* is that it cuts both ways: the live-action segments set expectations at the level of a big-budget film, yet the large-scale battle sequences are entirely rendered through AI and strategy-game mechanics, diluting the historical weight and visual impact of those scenes. Still, when it comes to large-scale set pieces, developers inevitably face a trade-off between cost and production quality. This may serve as a reminder to industry practitioners that when making live-action interactive film games, they need to consider whether the budget can sustain the "high-quality live-action production" that the story's core demands.
In conclusion
None of this detracts from "Shaosong: Return Our Rivers and Mountains" being a new release worth watching in the current interactive film-game market. Interactive film-games naturally inherit cinematic DNA while gaining the immersive power of gameplay, making them ideal vehicles for stirring and carrying player emotion and insight. Once the narrative depth is refined, positive player feedback tends to multiply.
Even with numerous complaints about its shortcomings, there are still many players who were moved to tears by the phrase "Peng Jiu, I'm here" and feel that the only regret is that it could have been even better and more "epic". We look forward to seeing more impressive new products in the future gaming market.